Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM)

April 7-8, 2017

The Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, & Media is an interdisciplinary conference focused on exploring the connections between all segments of the liberal arts, as seen in text, media, and communication. We invite contributions from all fields within the liberal arts who see the same sorts of fascinating connections that we do.

The 25th annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM) at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, is currently accepting proposals for 15-minute papers from individuals and panels. We are particularly interested in papers that explore this year's theme: Altered States, Times, Perspectives. Purposefully broad in scope, this theme offers researchers a chance to present argument-driven papers on topics such as (but not limited to):

Utopia/Dystopia

Time Travel

Space Travel

Travel Narratives ("road" movies, novels, etc.)

HIstorical change

Political change

Changes in an author's work (or changes in the notions of authorship)

Changes in critical framework

Minority approaches/voices

Changing conceptions (of gender, race, identity, class, time, etc.)

Loss, displacement, destruction

Gain, (re)placement, (re)construction

This conference encourages proposals from a wide range of research in the humanities. Possible research areas include (but again, not limited to): literature and poetry, creative writing, linguistics, written and visual rhetoric, journalism, narrative and documentary film, music, games/video games, anime, television, radio, new and social media, history, and pedagogy in these fields.

If interested in presenting at the conference, please submit 200-500 word proposals by January 27, 2017, to mcllm@niu.edu, including name, institutional affiliation, email, and phone number of each author. Panel proposals should include a brief overview of the panel's theme and purpose, along with a 200-500 word abstract for each paper.

This year's distinguished keynote speaker will be Anne Lake Prescott, emerita professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. Professor Prescott's wide array of publications include: The Norton Critical Edition of Edmund Spenser's Poetry; French Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation; and Imagining Rabelais in the English Renaissance. In addition, she is also the editor or co-editor of several essay collections, including: Renaissance Historicisms; Female and Male Voices in Early Modern England; and Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry. Professor Prescott is also a founder and co-editor of the journal Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual.